People

Director

Adam M. Curry is an inventor and tech entrepreneur in San Francisco. He thinks the idea that consciousness and reality may be interconnected is really cool. He was fascinated enough by the idea to organize the project. Technology advances by trying something new, and he's very excited to explore the horizons of "consciousness technology."

He was the recipient of the MIT Ceres Connection Prize at 17, for an invention that converted electro-gravitational phenomena into signals that can help forecast seismic events, such as earthquakes. Adam has been featured in the Discovery Channel's Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and is on the board of the Society for Scientific Exploration. He has worked at Princeton's PEAR Lab, and Psyleron.

Science Advisor

Dean Radin, PhD, is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University. His original career track as a concert violinist shifted into science after earning a BSEE degree in electrical engineering, magna cum laude with honors in physics, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For a decade he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories. For over two decades he has been engaged in consciousness research. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, and several Silicon Valley think-tanks, including Interval Research Corporation and SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the US government.

He is author or coauthor of over 200 technical and popular articles, a dozen book chapters, and several books including the award-winning and bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997) and Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006). These books have remained in print since they were first published and they’ve been translated into ten foreign languages. His latest book, SUPERNORMAL (Random House, 2013), was published in July 2013. His technical articles have appeared in journals ranging from Foundations of Physics and Physics Essays to Psychological Bulletin and Journal of Consciousness Studies; he was featured in a New York Times Magazine ARTICLE; and he has appeared on dozens of television shows ranging from the BBC’s Horizon and PBS’s Closer to Truth to Oprah and Larry King Live. He has given over 275 interviews and talks, including invited presentations at Harvard (medical), Stanford (medical and statistics), Cambridge (physics), and Princeton (psychology), for industries including GOOGLE and Johnson & Johnson, and for government organizations including the US Navy and DARPA. In 2010, he spent a month lecturing in India as the National Visiting Professor of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, a program in the Indian government’s Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Advisor

Roger Nelson, PhD, is an experimental psychologist. He was Coordinator of Research at the PEAR laboratory at Princeton University from 1980 to 2002, and has directed the Global Consciousness Project (GCP), since its inception in 1997.

Design Lead, Founder of Superfuture Labs & Backplane

Superfuture Labs’ mission is to advance humanity through technology, art and design. Superfuture is the creator of the popular mobile apps such as Life, Sketch, Kiwi and Spaces. Life is the latest product that is working on AI detection to see what one is doing like brushing teeth or eating then instantly matching people doing the same thing at the same moment, creating shared live experiences. Adhering to design principles that make the products both a tool and a toy — beautiful, simple, fun, playful and friendly. He holds the patent for “Content sharing application utilizing radial menus”.

Joey serves on the board of fashion technology company Studio XO and advises the IceBreak, Collective Consciousness app Entangled, Retinad VR and astronaut training facility Star Harbor Academy. Prior to Superfuture, Primiani co-founded the company Backplane, a platform that allows like-minded people to connect across their shared interests. He created Lady Gaga's official fan community website, LittleMonsters.com. Viewed by millions on a monthly basis, it is a place where fans can come together and share their artwork and stories.

Chief Technology Officer

Prof. Schahram Dustdar is Professor of Computer Science and director of the Distributed Systems Group at the TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology) in Austria. From 2004-2010 he was Honorary Professor of Information Systems at the Department of Computing Science at the University of Groningen (RuG), The Netherlands. From Dec 2016 until Jan 2017 he was a visiting professor at the University of Sevilla, Spain and from January until June 2017 he was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, USA

From 1999 - 2007 he worked as the co-founder and chief scientist of Caramba Labs Software AG in Vienna (acquired by Engineering NetWorld AG), a venture capital co-funded software company focused on software for collaborative processes in teams. Caramba Labs was nominated for several (international and national) awards: World Technology Award in the category of Software (2001); Top-Startup companies in Austria (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) (2002); MERCUR Innovation award of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (2002).

He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, ACM Transactions on the Web, and ACM Transactions on Internet Technology and on the editorial board of IEEE Internet Computing and IEEE Computer. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Computing (Springer). Dustdar is recipient of the ACM Distinguished Scientist award (2009), the IBM Faculty Award (2012), an elected member of the Academia Europaea: The Academy of Europe, and an IEEE Fellow (2016). More information at: dsg.tuwien.ac.at/staff/sd

Product Advisor

Rizwan "Riz" Virk is a well-known entrepreneur, author, and independent film producer in Silicon Valley. He created Tap Fish, a mobile app with over 30 million downloads, and co-counded Gameview Studios. He is the author of Zen Entrepreneurship, and produced the documentaries Sirius and Thrive, as well as other feature films.

Riz has been featured in Inc. Magazine, TechCrunch, and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He writes and speaks regularly about entrepreneurship, video games, film making, and spiritual growth. He is a graduate of MIT in Computer Science, and Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Mobile Engineer

Mirko is an execution-oriented engineer focusing on app development, infrastructure automation and hardware integration. He previously lead engineering teams at McKinsey & Company delivering enterprise software, as well as several startups. Mirko combines a strong business and customer-centric mindset with deep technical expertise. While he cares deeply about experience design and software architecture, Mirko is known for accelerating time to market with pragmatic decisions and a radically lean approach. He is the founder of Blackbelt Labs.

Interaction Designer

Ashlee Beggs is an interaction designer, code hacker and founder of Alternate Universe, with experience creating and designing for a wide set of platforms. She studied at Parsons the New School for Design in Communication Design and worked between NYC, LA, and SF.

She believes that we are all connected whether that be brainwaves, magnetic fields, multi-present simultaneous realities, quantum entanglement or magic, and is interesting in exploring those connections. The goal for her work is creating fun, engaging and delightfully surprising tools that can inform and help inspire ourselves and those around us.

Science Advisor

Cassandra is President and CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a scientist at the Mind-Body Medicine Research Group at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute. Dr. Vieten, a licensed clinical psychologist, has been with IONS since 2001, previously serving as its Executive Director of Research.

Technical Advisor

Loren co-founded Pixar and served as its chief scientist. He revolutionized the entire film industry through inventing rendering and modeling algorithms for image synthesis and visual effects. In 2001 he and two colleagues were awarded the only Oscar statuettes ever given for computer science.

In addition to his award-winning work in computer animation, Loren and his wife Rachel have explored new concepts in interactivity and computer art through their own company, Cinematrix, Inc.

Science Advisor

Professor Jahn is Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been chairman of the AIAA Electric Propulsion Technical Committee, associate editor of the AIAA Journal, and a member of the NASA Space Science and Technology Advisory Committee. He is vice President of the Society for Scientific Exploration and Chairman of the Board of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories consortium.

He has been a long-term member of the Board of Directors of Hercules, Inc. and chairman of its Technology Committee, and a member and chairman of the Board of Trustees of Associated Universities, Inc. He has received the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award of the American Society of Engineering Education and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Andrha University.

Community Advisor

Mikey Siegel is a young inventor and engineer. As a grad student at MIT, he worked on various aspects of human robot interaction at the MIT Media Lab, and as a NASA engineer, contributed to the robotic systems of the Mars Rover. Mikey is the founder of the Consciousness Hacking Movement begun in San Francisco, and founded Biofluent: a company providing tools for integrating body, mind, and spirit. Most recently he founded the Transformational Technology Lab, in partnership with Sofia University, which explores the boundaries of technology and human well-being. Check out his website and Ted Talk.

Philosophy Lead, Psychologist & Author

Adrian David Nelson is a British psychologist and philosopher specializing in consciousness and philosophy of mind. He is the author of Origins of Consciousness, a ground breaking book exploring emerging scientific perspectives on the nature of mind and its place in the universe. Adrian also wrote and produced the popular indie documentary Reality and the Extended Mind, which investigates the controversial science of psi research and its extraordinary implications.

Science Advisor

Dr. Mossbridge is a Research Associate and Adjunct Faculty member of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. She uses computational, behavioral, and physiological techniques to examine how humans integrate what we experience over time into a so-called “stream” of consciousness. Her interest in this topic has led her to examine both mundane aspects of timing (e.g., order effects on reading comprehension, perceptual integration across senses), as well as the more controversial reverse-temporal effects she analyzed in her recent meta-analysis (covered in ABC News 20/20, Wall Street Journal Ideas Market, Fox News, and other mainstream media outlets).

A peer reviewer for Brain Research, Perception, Cognition, PLoS One, Explore, and Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Dr. Mossbridge has received post-doctoral funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Bial Foundation, and the Monroe Institute.

Julia's Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders is from Northwestern University, her M.A. in Neuroscience is from University of California at San Francisco, and she received her B.A. with highest honors in neuroscience from Oberlin College.

Chief Connector

Lauren is a strategic advisor to leading corporations in the health care industry, and acts as a board member to select high tech start-ups. She is the founding strategist for several non-profit organizations, including Consciousness & Healing Initiative (CHI).

Advisor

Dr. Larry Dossey is an internal medicine physician, former Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital, and former co-chairman of the Panel on Mind/Body Interventions, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Mediciine, National Institutes of Health.

He is executive editor of the peer-previewed journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. He is the author of twelve books on the role of consciousness and spirituality in health, which have been translated into languages around the world. His most recent book is ONE MIND: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Maters. He lectures around the world.